


Ghosts

by SpellCleaver



Series: Love Is Not Enough [7]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Family, Gen, Introspection, Mentions of Slavery, Skywalker Family Drama, Skywalker Family Feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-19
Updated: 2017-11-19
Packaged: 2019-02-04 10:47:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12769413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpellCleaver/pseuds/SpellCleaver
Summary: Shmi Skywalker, being dead, may not be able to stop things from going wrong, but she can certainly watch. And nineteen years later, she can at least tell her grandchildren the truth.





	Ghosts

When Shmi Skywalker dies, she does not disappear into the Force, the way that most do. She is not cut off from her family permanently - at least, not entirely. It is like she is looking through a one-way mirror: They can't see her.

But she can see them.

And she can see the horrors her son has wreaked across the galaxy.

She can see the effect her own death has on him. And she can see the precise moment his face changes.

It terrifies her more than the Sand People did. More than Watto did. More than Gardulla the Hutt did.

He reaches out and closes her eyes, tenderly, but his hands are shaking. Ani clutches her body against him, as though if he keeps holding on she might come back.

But she's never left. And she watches with something approaching despair as he rises to his feet, stalks to the entrance of the tent, and ignites his lightsaber. It's pale blue, she thinks - like the blazing Tatooine sky at the height of noon.

But it's not the height of noon, it's the middle of the night; the guards on the Tusken camp are drowsy. They're slow in turning, slow in noticing the enraged Jedi in their midst. They die for their negligence.

The screams in the camp almost drown out the angry buzz of the lightsaber as it darts through the air. It stands out harshly against the brown and yellow terrain, the beige tents, the Tuskens' pale sandy robes. Shmi finds herself watching it, mesmerised, as it dances; it's almost possible to imagine that such a beautiful thing isn't wreaking such evil deeds on a civilisation.

The last of the Tusken warriors falls beneath Anakin's assault, and he stands for a moment, breathing heavily, staring at the corpse at his feet. There is a charred black hole at the centre of its chest, and Shmi feels like her existence is being sucked into it.

_Ani?_ She had been so happy to see him before she died. _Now I am complete._

Now. . .

_Ani._

What is Ani doing?

What has Ani _done_?

She tries to close her eyes and look away. But she has to look, has to _see_. She doesn't miss what happens next.

Anakin steps over the warrior's corpse, and enters one of the tents, where a Tusken woman and a child are sleeping. And he kills them both before they can wake.

Shmi gasps, her hand automatically flying up to stifle the sound. But it does not matter; Ani can't hear her, and he goes on killing anyway.

He has killed them all by the time he is finished, and picks up her corpse to take the speeder back to the moisture farm.

She watches his conversation with the beautiful woman she remembers from so long ago, and is afraid for them both.

* * *

Shmi has endless time on her hands, being dead, and she uses it to reassure herself that her son is not evil. It was a moment of compulsion of human error. She is wise, and she understands how most sentient beings are prone to mistakes. She does not want to believe he is evil.

And she _doesn't_ believe he is evil.

She can see what toll the Clone Wars take on him, how being separated from his new wife hurts him. But he is a _hero_. He is _good_ and _noble_ and _the Hero With No Fear_ and one day he will go back to Tatooine to free the slaves, she knows he will.

She sees it when Padmé becomes pregnant, and even before Anakin knows, she is overjoyed. Padmé is just as happy, she can tell, but she worries that her political position and strenuous lifestyle might harm the baby. She never goes to a doctor about it, so that is what she calls it: the baby.

But somehow, Shmi knows she's carrying twins.

When Padmé tells Anakin the news, he does not lie when he says it's the happiest day of his life. And Shmi, looking at the two of them, is just as thrilled.

* * *

Shmi does not trust Chancellor Palpatine.

He is the sort of slave master who pretends to be nice, only to punish you harshly when you make a mistake. He is manipulative and cruel, and she can see him prodding at her son, poking at her son, dissecting him like the shaak steak he might eat for dinner. He intentionally draws out all the darkest parts of her Anakin, the parts she admits to being afraid of, the parts she's so desperately tried to ignore.

When Anakin confides in him one day about what happened at the Tusken camp, she wants to scream.

And she wants to scream when he goads Anakin into beheading that Sith Lord. She knows it's unnatural what the Jedi ask him to do; repressing his emotions is against the very nature of sentient life. But manipulating him into further walking down that dark path? Forcing him to embrace the evil inside him even further? Suggesting he actively seek vengeance against his oppressor?

There is something very, very wrong with the Chancellor.

Shmi can understand why her son capitulates in the end, but she does not condone it.

* * *

When Anakin suffers from the dreams again, she doesn't know what to think.

If he had dreamt of her death before it came to pass, who's to say they're not correct this time round?

But she does not like how the Chancellor seems to know about them without Anakin telling him - about the dreams, about his wife, about _anything_. She does not like how Anakin turns to him for help, and the solution is of course to further embrace the darkness. To subvert the laws of nature and reverse death.

She does not like this at all.

* * *

Shmi has never been more proud of her son than when he realises that Palpatine is a Sith Lord, and turns him in. He is resisting the pull. He is making his own destiny.

But then he thinks of Padmé. And he follows.

And he Turns.

She watches in horror as he marches on the Jedi Temple, her mind flashing back to the night she died so long ago, and his lightsaber tore through the Tuskens like flimsi.

This is so much worse.

She can't breathe as the little boy steps forwards, the terror on his face alleviated at the sight of the familiar Jedi Knight come to save them. "Master Skywalker," he says. "There are too many of them. What are we going to do?"

Anakin's 'saber is lit. And when the boy takes a half-step back, Shmi knows he understands what's about to happen.

* * *

Padmé's silver yacht breaks the atmosphere. Anakin turns to look at it, his face splitting in the closest approximation of a smile that he could in these circumstances.

She lands. The conversation goes downhill from there.

"The Jedi betrayed me. Don't you betray me too!"

He is angry.

"Anakin, you're breaking my heart. You're going down a path I can't follow."

She is afraid.

Shmi is afraid too. She has never been more terrified than when she looks behind Padmé to the ramp of her ship, to the Jedi Master standing there. Shmi never met Obi-Wan Kenobi in person, but she's seen him interact with her son. She's seen how much they mean to each other.

But then again, she's seen how much _Padmé and Anakin_ mean to each other. And that doesn't stop him from reaching out and choking her until she lies unconscious on the ground.

The two Jedi begin duelling, but Shmi cannot bear to look at it, to see two brothers become enemies. Instead she kneels next to Padmé's limp body, remembering the warmth and compassion and quiet strength of the teenager she met on Tatooine thirteen years before, and places a hand on her belly.

Padmé is still alive; she's sure of it. The babies kick under their grandmother's non-corporeal hand; they are unharmed as well.

She stays with Padmé as the fight leads away the Jedi away from the ship. She watches as the protocol droid her son built her so long ago gets Padmé on board. And when she has heard the angry cries of _"I hate you!"_ floating up from the fiery shores, Obi-Wan returns to the ship and flies away.

She follows them, having no desire to look at what her son has become.

* * *

_What's happened to Ani?_

_What's happened to my boy?_

* * *

The twins are born healthy, if screaming. They already know what they have lost.

Shmi doesn't understand why Padmé passes away - she has _not_ lost the will to live, as the droid suggests. She remembers being a mother, remembers the feeling of, even as a slave, having someone besides herself to fight for. Padmé wouldn't give up so easily.

But the _why_ doesn't change anything; there is no denying the fact that Padmé is dead, her children orphans.

A part of Shmi wonders if her son would return if he realised he had two living kids; it seems cruel to separate family like this. But on the other hand, her son is very close to Chancellor-turned-Emperor Palpatine, and she does not trust _him_ anywhere _near_ her grandchildren.

What's unquestionably cruel, however, is separating the twins.

Leia is sent off to two of Padmé's friends, good people Shmi doesn't know, who will undoubtably love and protect her as if she is her own.

Luke is sent home.

And because she _wants_ to go home, Shmi follows. She will not keep watching over Anakin - not when he's rejected his name, even _knowing_ what that means on Tatooine, and will likely practice nothing but evil for the foreseeable future. There is good in him, but there is evil too, and too much of it for the good to win. For now.

So she watches Owen and Beru raise Luke, and desperately hopes things will turn out okay.

* * *

Luke is a dreamer, she soon learns. He's always pestering for details about his "navigator" father, and staring at the stars, and wishing to get off the planet. He reminds her of Ani - little Ani, when he was still the child she knew.

A part of Shmi wonders if he's never truly satisfied on Tatooine because his sister, his other half, is on Alderaan.

_Alderaan is such a long way from here._

It's what he will say to Obi-Wan - turned Ben Kenobi - one day. It's true.

* * *

Another day, however, before any more tragedy comes to pass, Luke is playing in his room on his own when he looks up at her and asks, "Who are you?"

She starts, before her mouth curves into the brightest beaming smile she's ever mustered. "I'm Shmi Skywalker," she says, sitting cross-legged on the ground next to him so he doesn't have to crane his neck to look at her.

He can see her.

Someone can _see her_.

"You're Grandma Shmi?" he asks with something like awe, his eight-year-old face alight.

"Yes, Luke," she says, raising a hand to his cheek. She's still not solid, still can't actually touch him, but for a moment she can pretend. "I'm your grandmother."

* * *

Shmi is the one who teaches him mechanics, remembering the skill with which Ani could fix anything and everything. She shows him the secrets workings of the droids, the way Ani showed her over two decades ago, and he learns quickly.

When he says to his aunt and uncle that "Grandma Shmi taught me this!" she sees her stepson shake his head and mutter something about a wild imagination, but she doesn't miss the fondness in his smile, or the twinge of grief. Beru humours Luke, listens to him chattering on about ghosts and spare parts, but Shmi doesn't think it's simply humouring him.

Knows that the Whitesun bloodline has been freeborn for far longer than the Lars one, and that Beru might have stories left over that Owen doesn't.

That maybe she believes Luke, if only because she desperately wants it to be true.

* * *

_"Darth Vader was a pupil of mine, before he turned to evil. He betrayed and murdered your father."_

* * *

It has been years since she last manifested herself to Luke when she finally does so again, on board the _Millennium Falcon_ bound for Yavin 4. He is mourning everything he's lost when she appears.

She knows he's aware of her presence, but it is a while before he acknowledges her. He doesn't look at her as he says, "I miss Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru."

_And Ben,_ she finishes for him. _And_ _Padmé and Anakin and me and Leia and everyone else you've lost when you shouldn't have. I'm so sorry, Luke._

Out loud, she says, "I know."

"I wish nothing had changed," he claims. "I wish we'd never bought the droids and everything was still the same."

She smiles, her heart-breaking yet again for her family, and repeats the words she once said to Anakin so long ago. "But you can't stop the change, no more than you can stop the suns from setting."

This time, it's him who replies, "I know", the words so soft she barely catches them.

There's footsteps behind her, and Shmi whirls to see Leia come through to the living quarters from the cockpit. She hasn't seen her granddaughter in so long - she's a grown young woman now, and bears more than a passing resemblance to her mother.

Leia's eyes go straight to Luke, that strange gravity between them that neither can explain blinding her momentarily to her grandmother's presence. "Are you okay, Luke?"

Her twin doesn't respond; he's still staring at something far away, into some dreamscape she could never hope to imagine. He isn't looking at her - rather, _through her_ \- but Leia follows his gaze anyway, and gives a little gasp.

"Who are you?" she whispers in wonder - the same wonder Luke showed when he first saw her as a child.

Shmi aches with indecision for a moment. Should she tell them? Should she tell them why they suddenly feel like they're whole again when in each other's presence, why they bonded so quickly and easily, why seeing the other in pain cuts them right through to the bone?

The Jedi would say no. Yoda and Obi-Wan, who'd taken control of these twins' destinies the moment they were born, would keep them in the dark about their parentage. Even now, she thinks she hears the voice of Ben Kenobi in her head - _don't do it. Don't tell them._

But they are her _family._ And she refuses to lie to them any longer.

"My name is Shmi Skywalker," she says. "And I have a story to tell you."

* * *

For the first time in years, she can speak with Anakin. He stands with her, watching as Luke and Leia burn Darth Vader's body.

"I'm so proud of them," she says, looking sideways at her son. "I am so proud of _you_." _For finding the light again,_ is what she doesn't say. _For rectifying your mistakes_.

Anakin doesn't seem to hear. His attention is riveted on his children, and she remembers the thought she had at the twins' birth: that it was a cruelty to keep them away from their father.

"My son," he whispers. "My boy."

Luke looks up briefly, and nods at them with a faint smile, before he takes him sister's hand.

"Leia," Anakin continues. "Leia, my daughter, my little girl."

She doesn't listen.

Shmi takes Anakin's hand. "She will hear you when she's ready," she promises, and as a new sunrise peers through the canopy of the forest moon of Endor, hope blooms again.


End file.
